I normally do Monday Musings now and then, but this week I’ve not gotten around to it, so here’s some Thursday Musings instead.
On Real Life
While this might not interest you at all, and you’re welcome to skip to the next part, I wanted to mention that you may have noticed me being a bit slow on updates at times. This is because I’ve been busy fretting about that horrible Real Life thing going on and the fact that in just over a week I’m out of a job.
WoW has been a bit on the backburner other than showing up for raids, but I’ve got posts in the works – and will continue on them as soon as I can.
On Raiding
My guild isn’t a server first guild, or even a heroic guild. We have attendance problems and a lot of times it takes us a while to get going when new content is released. It’s frustrating, but we deal with it.
Our goal this expansion has been to clear content on normal before the nerfbat hits. When Blizzard announced the 4.2 nerfs we had only just reached Ragnaros, and they gave us all of two remaining raid nights after their announcement to work on him.
I’m happy to say that we finally got him down on Tuesday night (with the patch hitting Wednesday in Europe), so we beat the nerfbat by mere hours. But we did it.
Last night we went back in to see how the raid looked after the nerfs. And boy is it nerfed. I suspect that a lot of the fights we have previously 3 healed we can now (and probably should) switch to 2 healing.
Beth’tilac
We did it with our normal setup of 2 tanks and 3 healers, but I suspect we could easily have 2 healed it (we have done before). Nothing hits as hard anymore and the adds die quicker. There were times when all adds were dead and we were actually standing around waiting for the next wave of spinners to drop down off the web.
Shannox
Okay, we ended up doing this on Heroic (our first one) and it still took us a few tries to get him down. I’m sure it would have taken quite a few more tries had the nerfs not hit. You will still wipe on Heroic if you don’t get the trapping right, but everything does less damage and the boss has less health so you burn him down quicker.
Lord Rhyolith
At first we thought there were less of the little adds, but they were just dying quicker. Again, everything was just dying quicker and doing less damage to us.
Alysrazor
We started out as normal, 2 tanks, 2 healers and 1 person flying. But we soon realised that the adds and hatchlings died really quite fast, and our shadow priest soon was soaring up in the air with me.
The caster adds don’t do their Fieroblast nearly as often, and they die fast. The whirlwinds are ridiculously slow. You never have to switch direction. Alysrazor died quickly as well. She was dead before we had a second whirlwind phase.
Baleroc
We did it with 3 healers, but I know 2 would have worked. The crystals didn’t seem to do so much damage and people could eat more stacks than before. The melee swings of the boss are really slow and he just went down quickly.
Majordomo Staghelm
Things just do less damage, and with his lower health he was dead before we even entered the phase with the Burning Orbs.
Ragnaros
I’m so glad we got him the night before, because we went back in with 3 minutes left on our raid time and figured we’d just do one try – and one shot him. This being the boss we’d spent 3-4 nights on. The adds die really quick now – I was Demonology for our first kill for the extra stun on adds – but last night I went in as Affliction and the adds posed no problem.
I’d like to say that we just knew the fight so well after our first kill, but let’s be honest – he’s just nerfed to the ground.
The good thing I guess is that until 4.3 hits we can get away with raiding one night a week and clear all of Firelands. We might do an extra night a week and clear some more Heroic modes to gear up before 4.3
How are you finding the nerfed content?
On Project Ten
Nothing much is happening with levelling due to the aforementioned reasons. I’m not playing all that much outside of raids right now, but I’m still planning to get back to this.
The few changes:
The Shaman has gone from 80 to 82.
The Druid has gone from 58 to 75.
And I’ve started my baby DK who’s not part of the challenge, and so not really something I should work on (but she’s fun!) and she’s currently 66, but sitting tight for now.
Extra
My friend and the Guild Master of my Paladin alt’s Horde guild has started blogging. You should go say hi to her!
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The nerfs were definitely extreme. I heal as a Disc priest, and during the Beth’tilac encounter (which we 2-healed) the druid downstairs died. This was before the 3rd Smoldering Devastation. So basically I healed the final phase alone; that would not have been possible for us pre-nerf. I smite-healed our single tank for most of Baleroc (Which we still three-healed, though we learned that one person could almost absorb an entire crystal.) More smitehealing on Alys, and the hatchlings were down so fast we were standing around for 25-30 seconds, waiting for tornadoes.
We were astonished at the difference in difficulty. Or not-difficulty, as the case may be.
That’s exactly it. I can understand them nerfing (although I think it was way too soon.. last nerf was 6 months down the line, this one.. 10 weeks?) – but this wasn’t a small nerf, it was huge! I’d rather they had done it ICC style successive, and/or that you could choose whether to activate them.
Sorry to hear about the rl stuff. I’m in a similar position right now and it sucks.
Sorry to hear about your rl stuff too then. Let’s hope for an improvement for both of us!
“Last night we went back in to see how the raid looked after the nerfs. And boy is it nerfed. I suspect that a lot of the fights we have previously 3 healed we can now (and probably should) switch to 2 healing.”
Great! Just as we get our healing team up to a consistent 3! *insert grumbling and feet shuffling here*
I’m sad about the nerf so soon too. We only had one half of one evening on him and were making decent progress. I’ve let the guys know that I expect him down 2h’s into the raid (giving them one hour to clear the other bosses). I was joking but they’ve taken me up on my challenge haha!
Oh and thanks for the shout out! <3
I'm still trying to figure out what I'll be rambling on about, but till then it should be nice and random
I think it’d be interesting to read more about how you deal with juggling baby, raiding and everything. Also about how you run your guild and how you do things and rules etc. It’s interesting to read how different guilds deal with different situations. Then I like reading about people’s adventures in games and their opinions on different things… Okay I guess I like reading most things, so this is no help at all!
Also, you should start filling out your URL field now!
It’s not that you can’t still do it with 3 healers if you prefer – the dps requirements certainly aren’t higher than before *lol* But on some fights I’m not sure how much healing you’d have to do
Maybe we should stick to 3 and see it as vacation before 4.3! *lol*
I’m really interested in how the nerf has affected people. Our guild is only 2/7 right now in normal but we’re going in tonight to see how that works. We’re going to try 2 healing it, which means I’ll be a pewpewchicken instead of a tree. I really want to see how this goes!! Thank you for your insights!!
Oh, it’ll be interesting to see how you’ll do tonight. I imagine you’ll see quite some progression with new boss kills. The mechanics of fights can’t be ignored (of course), but they seem a lot more lenient to people making a mistake now and then. So I think the learning curve on new bosses might be lower. Will check your blog for updates on how you did tonight